Coyotes Have Gone to the Dogs
Out riding a forest trail at night, it is common to hear a coyote howl. This can give a greenhorn a bit of a start, but not as bad as hearing a cougar. Is the word pronounced KY-ote or ky-O-tee? Depends on where you are. While coyotes frequently make guest appearances in Western shows, they are found in most of these here United States, including New York and Alaska. They have a bad reputation, but it may not be entirely deserved.
These critters are crafty, stealing and eating all sorts of things. Sometimes they hunt in packs or even team up with other animals. By the way, the one in the cartoons should have caught the roadrunner because coyotes are faster.
Like their jackal and dingo cousins, they are considered pests. Some folks try killing them off which actually causes them to increase their population! They breed well, and the Eastern coyote has been found to have domestic dog DNA. Those in the wild have been known to breed with wolves as well. Darwin's disciples mistakenly call this "evolution", but that is not the case. Scientists are uncertain about the definition of species (Wikipedia, that bastion of objective science notwithstanding), but this activity illustrates the created kind of Genesis.
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| Credit: Flickr / AdititheStargazer (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) |
Like their jackal and dingo cousins, they are considered pests. Some folks try killing them off which actually causes them to increase their population! They breed well, and the Eastern coyote has been found to have domestic dog DNA. Those in the wild have been known to breed with wolves as well. Darwin's disciples mistakenly call this "evolution", but that is not the case. Scientists are uncertain about the definition of species (Wikipedia, that bastion of objective science notwithstanding), but this activity illustrates the created kind of Genesis.
In many American Indian tales and traditions, the coyote is renowned as the Trickster—greedy, vain, cunning, and a liar. When European settlers arriving at the Great Plains first encountered it, aside from “heralding it as an icon of the expansive West”, the coyote’s reputation fared little better. Raids on livestock soon saw the colonists “vilifying it as the ultimate varmint, the bloodthirsty bane of sheep and cattle ranchers.”3 No doubt remembering Europe’s wolves, which it resembles, the settlers’ names for the coyote included brush wolf, prairie wolf, little wolf, and cased wolf. (Sometimes also the American jackal; though larger, the coyote is similar to the golden jackal of Eurasia.)To read the rest of this extremely interesting article, click on "The wily coyote—dogged by reputation, this coy ‘wolf’ continues to surprise".